Background: Farmers commonly experience musculoskeletal pain in back, knee, and shoulder. In particular, women farmers are more vulnerable to musculoskeletal disorders than men. Exercise programs are very effective in reducing musculoskeletal pain. Until now, exercise programs have been conducted face-to-face. Despite the obvious effects, face-to-face education and exercise programs are limited in their overall implementation. To overcome geographical and physical barriers, we decided to introduce eHealth technology to farmers' musculoskeletal health care. By developing a self-exercise provided through a mobile application, it provides a tailored exercise program for shoulder, knee, and back pain to female farmers living in long distances after musculoskeletal health checkup, and this is a program that enables real-time feedback.
Method/Design: This is a protocol proposal for a prospective, single-center, randomized, controlled study. We plan to recruit 200 female farmers aged 41-70 years. This study was planned as two (MODE phase I and II) randomized control studies. Initially, shoulders, knees, and low back are evaluated, and severities for each are divided into three levels to provide individualized exercise programs. In MODE-I, the recruited subjects will be randomly allocated to 1 of 2 groups, using a computer-generated randomization method: the experimental (n = 100) or control group (n = 100). The experimental group (app-delivered exercise group) will perform 3-month self-exercise using a smartphone app. Subjects belonging to the active control group (booklet-delivered exercise group) will perform 3-month self-exercise by providing physical education data (booklets). The following outcomes including exercise-completion will be assessed at 3 months, and the subjects will be randomly allocated to MODE-II groups. In MODE-II, the experimental group (feedback+app group) performed exercise using a smartphone app that added feedback to the subjects. Subjects belonging to the active control group self-exercise using a smartphone app without the feedback function (feedback-app group). Every three months, the level and level of exercise program will be evaluated and the level of difficulty will be changed. After completion of MODE-II exercise, all subjects will be evaluated for close-out assessment.
Discussion: This will be the first attempt to compare methods using booklets and apps to identify effective ways of providing personalized self-exercise programs according to musculoskeletal health stages through examination (MODE-I). We will conduct a MODE-II study to check the effect of adding the function of feedback in the mobile app. This can be a useful method of managing musculoskeletal health for farmers living in rural areas, and it can be a method of promoting health in the untact era. |
